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Miniport Drivers

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Miniport drivers directly manage network adapters that are installed on a device. At the lower edge, miniport drivers use NDIS to communicate with the adapter hardware. At the upper edge, miniport drivers present an interface to allow protocol drivers to configure the adapter and to send and receive packets over the network.

A miniport driver maintains information about its capabilities and status, as well as information about each NIC that it controls. An object identifier (OID) identifies each information type. NDIS Objects are system-defined.

NDIS and higher-level drivers can query and, in some cases, set information using OIDs. Higher-level drivers call NdisRequest to query or set information. To perform a query operation, NDIS calls the miniport's MiniportQueryInformation function. To perform a set operation, NDIS calls the miniport's MiniportSetInformation function.

Windows CE currently supports miniport drivers for the following medium types:

  • Ethernet (802.3)
  • Token Ring (802.5)
  • IrDA
  • WAN

See Also

Miniports, Intermediate Drivers, and Protocol Drivers | MiniportQueryInformation | MiniportSetInformation | NdisRequest | NDIS Objects

 Last updated on Tuesday, May 18, 2004

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